


Review/Meta (sort of) on Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon

by shadowkat67



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode Related, Essays, Meta, Multi, Steven Moffat Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-01
Updated: 2011-05-01
Packaged: 2021-02-19 16:01:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22380343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67
Summary: This is a commentary on the various metaphors found in both episodes and suggested by commentary by the creators of the episode.
Relationships: The Doctor/Amy Pond (Doctor Who), The Doctor/River Song





	Review/Meta (sort of) on Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon

Just watched "Doctor Who in America" special which was quite amusing in places. The cast and crew apparently think Mark A Sheppard does a brilliant American accent and that's why we think he's American. Uh no. His accent sounds Scottish actually. It's just we have a lot of American citizens who speak with Scottish, Irish, German, etc accents. One gets used to it. Also, Moffat apparently does plot his stories in advance. He actually plotted Season 5 and Season 6 together, and I'm guessing built the plot directly from Season 4. And the only one who knows everything he has planned is Alex Kingston who plays River - because River would know everything...since the Doctor is meeting her back to front. She knows his future and he knows her's and we're in his pov. Moffat, who has been an actor (I think he actually acted in Coupling), seems to understand how actors work and has provided each actor with a secret that only their character knows and can't tell anyone else. It provides a layer of reality to their performance. The vastness of the US astonished the cast and crew. Particularly Monument Valley in Utah. They were also astonished by Doctor Who's popularity in the States and seemed to be under the false impression that this is a recent occurrence - no, Doctor Who did make it across the pound in the 1960s and 1970s, there are die-hard fans of the series over here.

I'm not sure what to make of the metaphors to be honest. The tricky thing with metaphor is they can be interpreted more than one way. Take for example _The Silence_ \- the villains of the piece. They could be a metaphor for ingrained behavior patterns and not thinking for oneself. A common theme in the series. According to the special I just watched they are based on the "Silent Scream Painting". 

Which by the way, it looks quite a bit like. I've always thought of it as the silent scream. So they did a good job. It's not what I came up with - I came up with Roswellian aliens - but that's only because I've watched one too many bad alien invasion films in my life-time and well they do look a lot like Whitey Strieber and Stephen Spielberg's take on aliens.

They also look a lot like the Scream mask in Kevin Williamson's Scream films. I can't quite decide if it is just coincidence that Moffat's new villain resembles an American villain trope or deliberate. Knowing Moffat? I'm guessing the latter. Moffat is an extremely detailed writer.

I have changed my mind about the villains by the way...they are creepy and possibly the scariest that Moffat has created to date. I admit to having troubles getting the image of Amy looking up at the ceiling to see the Silence hanging there asleep like bats, in a cluster of more than 50 or thereabouts above her head. The orphanage sequence was beyond creepy and expertly filmed.

The reason they are scary is not how they look but the "silent scream" - the fact that the victim  
can't remember them once they look away. It's the thing in the corner of your eye. Just out of sight. Behind you. Under the bed. In the closet. That you can't see, or remember...but there's this nagging thing in the back of your head.. that you should and it is why you are afraid to sleep at night. This goes back to S1 and Amy Pound - who lives alone in a house, with no parents, and a crack in her wall. A crack that is scaring her. And she prays for help. Help comes in the form of the Doctor, who returns years later to find her in the same house, in the same room, with the same crack. And he discovers a monster that you can't quite see, that is at the very corner of your eye. And it calls itself Prisoner X and talks about The Silence.

Oddly the house and Amy's orphaned state at the beginning of S5 is echoed by the little girl in the Orphanage at the beginning of S6 - who is also by herself, in a large creepy place, and has a monster she is attempting to escape. And on her dresser are pictures of herself at varying ages, and finally one of Amy holding a baby.

The Doctor dies and regenerates at the Beginning of S5 or S5 begins at the place End of Time ends.  
Here' the Doctor actually dies at the beginning of S6, but it is an older version of the Doctor, one who is 200 years older. 1103. Who has invited his younger self to arrive just after his demise.  
And at the end of this episode, a little girl goes back in time, I'm pretty sure it's the same one that was in the astronaut costume which Amy assumes killed the Doctor. And the little girl regenerates.

The little girl, even if she is not directly related to Amy, is metaphorically related in that both are little girls saved by the Doctor, and thrown out of their time-space continuum. And both are rescued from vacant houses filled with monsters that you can't quite see or remember.

Then we have Rory who discusses ancient Rome with the Doctor. Rome fell, says Rory. I know, says the Doctor, I was there. So was I, states Rory. And the Doctor states: I always wondered if you actually remembered your time as a Centurian. All those years, waiting for Amy to show up. I don't states Rory. Liar, says the Doctor. Rory too has been thrust outside his normal time and space and it has affected him. Earlier he cautions Amy against telling The Doctor what happens to him - it's what happened before, when the Doctor tried to fiddle with the time-space continuum, meeting himself, time did almost collaspe. [While the whole Rory feeling insecure regarding Amy's feelings for the Doctor bit felt a tad redundant, it also made a lot of sense and I think did require addressing. Rory refers to it in the first episode - when he comments that he can imagine the effect that the Doctor might have on an impressionable young girl - remember he had been fighting Amy's imaginary friend for quite some time prior to that friend turning out to be real. The second, he makes a point of telling the Doctor that he'll save Amy and Amy knows that. He in effect is competing with him. And that's why the Doctor brings up the whole Rome bit - he in fact, and somewhat cruelly reminds Rory how difficult it must have been waiting all that time just for Amy Pound to show up. It is there for another reason - a commentary on the Doctor's relationship with River Song - who River is waiting to show up. )

And then there's River...who makes no sense and yet a lot of sense at the same time. We first meet River in a space-suit. No clue who she is. Way back in Silence in The Library. Oddly that's her death. Or a death of sorts...the Doctor finds a loop-hole, a way for her to survive. She's in a space-suit. Aren't these old fashioned, Amy states. But they are cool, says the Doctor. And why make something new when you can copy from someone else. River's suit in Silence in The Library is almost the same suit as the one the little girl is wearing, and the person in the water who kills the Doctor. I'm guessing it can't be River, because River would know it was going to happen - right? Her future we've already seen. Then again maybe not. Time travelers don't travel in a straight linear line. They jump about. That's why the journals - to figure out when they are meeting along it. River could still be the one who does it, or not. The kiss they share could be River's last or not. We don't know. According to the River in Silence in the Library - the last time she sees The Doctor, he takes her out to the opera, they have a lovely romantic interlude, and he knows that she is going to her death - that she's going to the Library, and he gives her his screwdriver - to help, it's what saves her life.

But here's the problem with time travel - as discovered in S5...you can trigger anomalies, change events, and create temporal disturbances. Doctor Who is careful to avoid it. Spoilers spoil the story, create self-fulfilling prophecies and can unravel time. He can't change what happened, if he does, he threatens the universe.

Who is River? Why is she in prison? Who is the little girl? Why can she regenerate like the Doctor? Who kills the Doctor? Is that really the Doctor or a clone? And is Amy Pound really pregnant and if so, are The Silence involved? They had her for a while up there after all. And they told her to tell the Doctor two things, one she told him, the other she hasn't. (As [](http://crossoverman.livejournal.com/profile)[**crossoverman**](http://crossoverman.livejournal.com/) stated, speculation is dicey with Moffat because he's usually 10 million steps ahead of you. I didn't see the girl regenerating at the end either - that took me entirely by surprise.

The water imagery also plays throughout, with the swimming pool, River's name, and the lake that the astronaut mysteriously appears in and disappears into - rising up like some sort of apparition, creepy in the extreme, killing the Doctor and sinking down again. While River falls off the building into a swimming pool in the Tardis. Saved by Water, Killed by something that rises from Water.

And time which is a bit like water, flows...but not necessary in a straight line. Canton Delaware the III. The old man, the young man. The only one who ages, that we see in the present and the past, unaffected by Tardis. Canton changes. The others do not. The little girl - I'm assuming does, but we don't know for certain either.

This is an episode that raises more questions than it answers. A lot is implied, but none of it is clear.

From reading others commentary and comments to my last post on the topic, I'm pretty sure River is not in prison for killing the Doctor (since she escaped from Prison to picnic with him and was as taken by surprise as everyone else). That doesn't mean she isn't the one who does kill him at some point in the distant future or that it even is him that is killed, but I doubt the former, not so sure about the latter. Anymore than it means that she's not Amy's child and not the girl in the suit.

Key to understanding River - may be figuring out the time line. It's not linear. They meet out of order. Not chronologically. Note - the 1103 Doctor meets River...and syncs journals, and considers her the person he trusts most in the world, before Amy even, then up pops the 909 Doctor who doesn't trust River at all, and trusts Amy more. Clear example of out-of-order. We could literally have this Doctor at some point meet River as a child, then meet her as an adult much later. They both travel and jump through and within time. River reminds me a lot of Captain Jack, she's a sort of female version of him. Jack was ambiguous character as well, who the Doctor also meets in and out of time, at the end of Jack's life - when he has no clue who the Face of Bow is, to the beginning. Moffat seems to understand time fairly well - it is not linear, our minds are linear.


End file.
